Dondondondondondon Town

Actually, it's called Den Den Town. Note to self: Do not go to Osaka when you know you're kind of stressed out and you know you should relax. Go to Kyoto.

Osaka and Kyoto are polar opposites, or at least today it feels that way. Kyoto's seemingly infinite number of temples and shrines and its peaceful riverside walks lacked big time today, when I decided to shoo myself off to the general Osaka area with two major missions: 1) Get a haircut and 2) Get a playstation. Did either of these get accomplished? NO.

My first step was to go to Kyobashi on the Keihan (of course) and look there for a cheap haircut place. I could've sworn I saw one there and that my host brother told me there was a good place (e.g. where the price was around 10 dollars) in the station for a haircut, but I could not find it. I then decided to go to Kitahama and switch to the Seidosuji(?) Line, from there departing for Nihonbashi, or, in patriotic 日本語 (nihongo, Japanese), "Nipponbashi." My intention was to go to Den Den Town and pick up a PS1. Neither of the enormous places I went to with enormous amounts of games from random-ass consoles like the Mega Drive and the Neo Geo, as well as those consoles themselves, had the original Playstation in stock. How is this so difficult to find? What on earth happened to the PS1 in Japan? What in Japan happened to the PS1 being on earth? I have gone about five separate places looking for it, but to no avail.

At least today I bought four separate DDR games. Yesss. But the fact is, if I don't acquire a Japanese PS1, I am not going to be able to play any of them. Let me check amazon.co.jp to see if they're available...

...Yes. Good. You'd be crazy to pay $57 in the US for a PS1 but I guess it's not so bad if it's a Japanese one. But you can get N64s here for half that price...

After leaving Den Den Town, I made the mistake of going to Shinsaibashi to look for the same barbershop that I passed about a month ago, no, more, when I went on a tour there with a fairly large group of people. Could not find. The haircuts were only 900 yen!!! (9 dollars. Nothing really to get excited over in the US.) I also intended on doing some shopping there but I was too tired and hungry and I just went there, not thinking, looking for the haircut. The barber, rather. I also went to the wrong train station and only realized this after exiting the gates, which means I had to pay 230 yen more than I should've. Not great.

And just to go to Shinsaibashi to not get a haircut.

Oh well, I went back into the train station and at least got a slice of pizza, at about 17:15. I almost couldn't eat my dinner at 19:00 as a result.

Which reminds me, I need to find that place, wherever the hell it was, that had hours ending at 25:00. That was great. I've never seen that before. I might be able to find it again in Hirakata if that's where it was. ARRR, can't remember

You know, the main reason I went out to Osaka today was because I need to get out of Hirakata more. There was a good four weeks that had passed before I finally got my ass on the train. That was pretty much an utter failure of a shopping trip, though. Also, good thing I have a test tomorrow: I need to start waking up earlier than 11:15 AM again.

It's time to tango. That is, 単語(tango, vocabulary). And 漢字。　And　読み。